It fuses the sabar and talking drum-driven rhythms of Senegal’s mbalax music with the German’s touch for techno and dub.
Mbalax was born in Senegal in the early 1970s and is seen as a fusion of influences from Latin-pop, Congolese rumba, Senegalese traditional percussion and American soul, blues and jazz.
The genre has given birth to stars like Youssou N’Dour and Baaba Maal, who have gone on to perform on stages around the world.
Now, in 2013, mbalax gets a revamp, thanks to Ernestus.
Released a few weeks ago, 800% Ndagga and Ndagga Versions are two companion albums of Ernestus’s collaboration with some of the finest Senegalese mbalax musicians.
The album 800% Ndagga features recordings that Ernestus produced with Baaba Maal, Mbene Diatta Seck, Ale Mboup and Kadim Mboup.
“I had come across mbalax and I was kind of addicted on the spot, but then, since it was close to impossible to find more of it, I ended up going to Senegal and Gambia, hoping to find some CDs or cassettes and maybe find some contacts to the music scene,” says Ernestus.
“Then, through a highly unlikely series of coincidences, within a few days I ended up in a four-day studio session with over 20 different musicians — and at the core were sabar players from the Jeri-Jeri family of drummers.”
This first recording session took place on January 2011 and Ernestus would return four more times to Dakar, each time recording new tracks with different guest musicians or singers.
“So I had a good album’s worth of killer recordings and I began working on the mixes of these,” says Ernestus.
In January 2012, the first product of this new collaboration hit the shelves in the form of the 12-inch single Mbeugel Dafa Nekh.
Released under the name Mark Ernestus Presents Jeri-Jeri, the song featured the vocals of Seck, and the B-side, Dub Dafa Nekh, was a dub mix from Ernestus without vocals.
Then, in May 2012, Ernestus released the 12-inch single Xale, also featuring Seck, who was singing about the plight of street kids and the parental neglect that leads them to the street. Again the 12-inch included a B-side dub, Xale Rhythm, and a new track, Daguagne, a six-minute instrumental.
The two 12-inches were followed by another three released between February and May this year.
Then for those who don’t collect vinyl 12-inches, Ernestus compiled all the released tracks on two CDs, 800% Ndagga, which used the vocal versions of Ernestus and Jeri-Jeri’s collaboration, and Ndagga Versions, which includes the dubs of the tracks.
The project sees Ernestus acting as producer, the Brian Eno to Jeri-Jeri’s Roxy Music, twisting and turning the addictive Senegalese rhythms with hints of dub and other club music thrown in.
In total, the two discs span an hour and a half of the most fascinating music you will have heard in a while.
“It occurred to me at the very beginning that we absolutely must do live shows with this project,” says Ernestus.
That is exactly what has happened.
“We did two smaller tours in Europe in 2012 with some killer shows in Berlin, Milan, Paris and others,” says Ernestus, announcing that more shows were being planned for when the album is released.
In fact, a look at the website ndagga.com, which Ernestus set up for the project, shows live gigs booked for Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands in the next few months.
For those who can’t get to Europe to witness this spectacle live, you can watch videos of live performances on the website.
But 800% Ndagga and Ndagga Versions should be among your most highly prized music purchases of 2013.